Unsolicited Offer For My Personal Domain Name?

Batzerto writes "Last Friday I received an unsolicited email offer for my domain — click the link below for the message. Their company name matches my domain, but with a country-specific top level domain (.NL in this case). They do seem to be legitimately using the domain in their country. As for my usage, the domain is my last name(.COM) and I'm only really using it for email. I'm not really that attached to it other than the hassle of changing email addresses. There are other flavors of the domain available (.US for example) that would suit my purposes just fine. So, Slashdot veterans, I ask you, what should I do? I'm leery of making an offer and falling into someone's legal trap. I wouldn't mind getting a chunk of cash out of the deal though."


From: ---
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2008 4:56 AM
To: ---
Subject: sell your domain ?

Dear Sir,

For my company I need the domain --- .
Is it possible to sell your domain to me?

Best Regards
N. de Robles

Comments

On the condition...

[DavidpFitz]

Sell it, on the condition that you can keep your email address on the domain.

Win-win!

Finally a use for the 'itsatrap' tag

[Idaho]

As you probably noticed yourself, it's likely a legal trap; if you show that you're interested in taking money for the domain name, they will then use that as an argument during legal proceedings that you're a domain name squatter.

So simply don't respond.

And why did *you* own chrysler-dodge-jeep.com?

[billstewart]

If you were a car dealer or specialized repair shop, then it may have been reasonable for you to own a domain using several of their trademarks. That's certainly too broad a set of categories to be a likely hobbyist organization. Sounds like you were cybersquatting.

That's a different case from acquiring generic names (which can be rather dubious as well), and a much different case from what the main article was about, which is somebody who owns a domain that's based on his own name.

Re:Turn the Screws on Their Thumbs

[QuasiEvil]

Everyone's talking about lawyers and whatnot... what happened to just being polite? I guess lawyers have ruined that too.

Actually, I think you've hit on something there. If you go in with the intent of having a low-key, civil discussion, often times things you would say in the course of those discussions may damage your case if things escalate.

In your case, I'd state that you own it because it is your name, and have used it for X number of years to provide services X, Y, and Z for yourself. That should help establish the legitimacy of your ownership, and may (IANAL) protect you against any trademark issues. Given that, you'd obviously be losing something of value and have a transition cost, and then invite them make a reasonable offer.

Re:Why?

[ColaMan]

And the voice of reason speaks up.

It doesn't appear to be that hard to be reasonable, does it? I really must try it sometime.

But seriously, I would negotiate a price and probably ask nicely if I can keep an email address on that domain for a while. It's no real hassle for the other side's servers, unless you're getting multi-gigabytes of spam a day. Then at least you've got a good period of time to phase out that address.

Or keep the MX records for your domain and sub-let the www section out to them for $200/year. That way everything essentially just stays the same for you, and they get a .com webpage.

Plenty of options if everyone's talking nicely at the table.